Intel Laptop vs Apple PowerBook

You have to say what you want to use the laptop for... in detail

Apple is behind in technology. They have been for a while. They do have some good aspects to them, but the non-Apple processors will almost always perform better than Apple processors.

Can't help with anything else, but hope that helped .

Major CON of Apple:-
The OS they use is not compatible with software designed for XP, so basically, u have a rly limited choice of software to install and this also means no games for you miister!! (except for a few games, like Call of Duty, but very raree to get a good game on the Apple)

Minor PRO of Apple:-
They are beautiful machines

And, Apple IMO is also overpriced! Not only that, Apple does not perform as well as Intel/AMD laptops.

Just my 2 cents on the mattter!

what's the point to apple?

Hmmm... iPods? iPods are pretty cool, nonetheless.

The Dothan will be faster. However, for day to day tasks (ie, not just benchmarking), the difference will be pretty much indiscernable.

OS X is a superior OS to Windows XP. Any task you would want to complete on XP except for games you can accomplish on OS X with the same software or similar software. . Plus, the built in software (iDVD, Garage Band, Mail, iMovie, etc) that comes with Macs is on the whole far better than the free stuff on Windows (and for stuff like Garage Band and iDVD, there's no real free alternative on Windows). It's better than alot of software that costs $100s too.

The OS is much more intuitive, easy to use, and elegant, yet it does things that Windows can't do.

If you're not a big Windows fan (which I assume you're not, since you're asking) the Macintosh is a much better platform. If you're relatively new to computers, there is no reason to go with Windows. No need to worry about spyware, viruses, incompatiblity, instability, etc with OS X.

The only drag on the powerbook is the one-button touchpad. Right clicking must be done with ctrl+click. Of course, external mice are available that solve this problem. Other than that, the Powerbooks and iBooks are better built and designed machines than any PC laptop.

I don't understand the overpriced argument. There is no PC laptop as well built and full featured as the 12" iBook for $1299 or 12" Powerbook for $1599 with the same level of support and included software.

Also, besides games, can you list any software you use for XP that is not available for OS X (or something with similar functionality is not available?)

They run OS X. PC laptops do not.

I'd argue the only benefits of PC laptops are faster raw processor speed, wider selection of games, and wider selection of hardware choices. (none of which match the overall level of design, technically and aesthetically, of Apple hardware)

Everything else, Apple does better.

PCs and Macs are both great choices, it really depends on what you want to do with the machine. If you're an average user that does email, web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, home video editing, digital photography, music listening, etc, there is little reason to go with PCs.

Although apple support is hard to beat there are stores (Hypersonic-PC, PC Tourque, and Discount Laptop*s) that give you very good support for a good laptop at a good price. If you hate the problems of Windows, LINUX is your OS! Most distros are Open Source so you can get them free (just download an ISO, burn it, and you are good to go). A beginer will have a good time with SUSE 9.1 Personal or Mandrake 10.0 Official. I never liked apples, even though my best friend is getting a powerbook for her bday. But, I can safly say that my lappy (Either the Compaq R3000t or the Acer Aspire from newegg) will be a more powerful and more useful of the 2.

I disagree.

I've used OS X.1, X.2 and X.3 (did a migration in one lab from MacOS 9 to X). I've also been using Windows and Linux for awhile.

I didn't find OS X THAT intuitive. What made things easier to do with X was my Linux background, and the fact that I could accomplish things faster just by going to the command line than fiddling with Apple's interfaces. There software wasn't ANY easier to use, you STILL had to load drivers despite what Apple would like you to believe, and I find software in general lacking on a Mac.

I think Apple really screwed the pooch on usability between X.2 and X.3. For that minor of an upgrade, I had to relearn a lot of stuff I shouldn't have.

I'll agree that Apple's free software that's included is pretty good.

Apples do a few things REALLY well, and they're OK at everything else. I think PC's are a generally better all around platform for every day use.

As for the look? Who cares? I'd take functionality over form any day. I pay for a machine to do a job, not look good on my desktop.

You've got to be kidding me on hardware. Aside from the motherboard and processor, Apple uses a lot of the same hardware you find in PCs. You find ATI and Nvidia graphics hards, standard IDE hard drives, standard memory, etc. Apple controls WHAT you get. If all you like is being able to configure the sizes of stuff, that's great. However, I've had just as many Apple failures as I've had PC failures in my day. PCs were generally a lot easier to recover from when a system got borked (especially true with Mac OS 9.x and earlier). I don't know how many times I'd get called down to a lab because we got the famous screen with the ? inside the computer.

Super

Have you ever used Macs for more than a couple of hours? How will the PC be more useful? What will you be able to do on it that you can't on a Mac except games?

My main mac usage in is school (eMac, iMac, New iMac, iBook, Powerbook, and G5) and it was mostly for productivity purposes. But, to get started (besides gaming), the 1 button mouse is a pain because I right click more often than i left click. Also, the AppleWorks software is quite useless. OpenOffice 1.1 for Windows (and Linux) is easier to use, has a cleaner interface and most importantly, it is FREE! I've had issues with mounting and unmounting drives in mac (mp3 player, cd, floppy, flash drive). IMO Mac OS has too much graphical BS (so does XP, so i use Win2K). The software library for windows is much, much larger (i know there is VirtualPC but we are talking native here). Honestly, I can find Mandrake 10.0 with WINE more productive than a mac. Now on the hardware side (comparison of my future compaq and my friend's powerbook) my screen is larger (more real estate for software), my touchpad has a scroll area and 2 buttons (for those frequent right clicks). The Motorola G4 can't match a 3ghz Prescott w/HT technology.

Not easier at all? Try setting up a printer wirelessly. One involves finding the IP address of the printer on the router, setting up a TCP/IP port to print to, finding the right driver for the printer, etc.

On Apple, it involves choosing the already correctly identified printer in a dialog via Rendezvous.

The OS is full of subtle things like this. Most people would have no idea how to publish a webpage of pictures from their digital camera. With the Mac, it's about three button clicks.

What software on Windows do you use that is lacking on Apple besides games?

Yes, Apple uses a lot the same hardware. But tell me after looking at the inside of a G5 that there is any PC that comes even close to that level of hardware design. The notebooks are similar--magnetic latches, stronger hinges, thinner and lighter compared to the vast majority of PC laptops (the 17" powerbook is a full 1.7lbs lighter than the lightest PC 17" laptop), power supply cord that changes color depending on whether it's charging or full, led's on the battery with a button to press to show the charge of it independtly from the computer, backlit keyboard, power supply that can be used in either long or short mode and has a receding plug and built in cord wrapper (no need to carry around two cords as with every PC laptop), 6 pin firewire port, etc. It's not just prettier, it's better engineered.

I'll grant you OS 9.x was a lacking OS. So was Windows 3.1 and 95-ME. How could you possibly have a problem getting a Mac back up now though? There's a restore cd with every mac. You put it in and press c when booting up. You can choose to either fix the disk or restore the comptuer. What is difficult about that?

-two button USB mouse with scroll wheel costs about $10 and works fine with OS X
-Appleworks is useless? arguable. But Microsoft Office is available for Mac and is better than the Xp version.
-I've mounted about 7 different types of drives on Mac and have never had a problem. Unmounting simply involves dragging to the trash.
-Yes, windows software library is larger. Quantity does not equal quality. Besides Open Office (which IS available for OS X--
http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ ), you haven't mentioned any software you use on Windows which isn't available.
-As for Linux, I am comparing XP vs OS X, because 99% of people on a PC will be using Windows.

As for you and your friend, bigger Mac screens are available, I agree about the touchpad, and the processors doens't really make it more usable, it just makes it theoterically faster (in day to day use there probably won't be much difference). IE, there isn't any software that's unusable simply because the G4 benchmarks slower than the Centrino/P4. The cost of that fast processor with the P4 is poor battery life.
Don't get me wrong, I think your machine is a great choice, but the Mac choice is just as valid.

This PC bias against Macs is mostly unfounded, it really comes down to which OS you are more comfortable with as neither one really does anything the other doesn't besides games. Likewise, Mac zealots that call PCs useless are wrong. There's not really a better chioce (except for people with little expereicne with computers, in which case Macs are definitely better), it comes down to what's important to you.

The whole speed issue being such a big deal is a bit of a mystery to me. I understand the desire to have the fastest thing out there, but when my Centrino laptop steps down to a very low processor speed on batteries I don't see much speed difference in anything I'm doing except gaming. And truthfully, I enjoying playing the consoles more than comptuers but that's a whole other issue.

Bull. I STILL had to have the driver loaded on the machine or it wouldn't work. I set up network printers for that lab. Once the drivers were loaded previously on the machine, the above worked. Maybe it was because we had a server version as well. I don't know.

Still not easier than a PC, though.

That's still not terribly hard on a PC either. So what if the software to do that is just as easy and comes from the camera's vendor?

Setting up restrictions for multipe users was a pain. Turning on and off apps wasn't fun. OS X server was definitely lacking in the user management. Defiinitely MUCH harder to set up rights, directories, etc, than Windows or Netware.

I also thought MS's software implementations sucked rocks. IE and Office weren't my favorites.

Final Cut was picky to install at times, but it was great when it worked. Uninstalling a borked installation required a ritual sacrifice practically.

It looks like any other computer to me on the inside. Same connections, etc are used.

Otherwise, might be better engineered if you care about that stuff. Macs were also a pain to repair anytime anything went on them. iMacs and eMacs were especially fun.

Not all Macs had backlit keyboards. The iBook I had didn't have one. I thought the power cord was a pain. Then again, it doesn't look like my Mac had the things you mentioned. Even so, it would go into the "extras" file in my book: might be nice to have, but I'm not going to pay extra for it and it's certainly something I can do without.

You might think it was engineering finesse. I thought of it as "what were the smoking when they designed this?"

The command line was a very powerful thing. I could do a lot more from a 98/DOS bootdisk that didn't require me to run the OS off the CD.

Disk FirstAid was almost completely useless as it wouldn't fix most of the errors on a hard drive. Good thing my employer had Norton Utilities.

The system restore might be easy, but it's not when you have customized configurations and the Macs had older CDs. So what if you're running OS 9.22 and you had the OS 9.0 CD, not fun, is it? Have to reload all the apps, upgrade the OS, etc.

I fell in love with Symatec's Ghost. NetRestore in X was the closest thing that came to it and even then it was severely lacking.

See, with Windows or Linux, I could use a Windows CD from any PC. Mac drove me nuts as I couldn't necessarily use the OS CD from a G4 tower with an iMac. It was frustrating to have to hunt down disks sometimes because the one I had on hand didn't work.

Firmware/BIOS updates were a joke too.

I dreaded everytime I had to hit the Mac labs.

Let's also not forget that Apple's "marketing" BS has turned a lot of people off too.

Super

Autocad, Inventor, any other autodesk product, mastercam. They aren't available and quite frankly nothing compares, yes you can do the samethings with other products but not with the same ease, and compatibility. I know if I go to anyone with a CNC lathe, and I have a autodesk file, I can get it milled, anywhere. Its the industry standard for a reason, its why people think all cad software is called autocad. I mean seriously why can they ask 4K for a peice of software if someone else has something compareable? Please. Lets look at gimp and photoshop for example, gimp does the same thing as photoshop, but it doesn’t do it as well, thats the difference between a comparable product and the real thing, I've used both, I much prefer photoshop.

Go ask someone that uses Final cut pro, they would laugh at you if you told them there was something comparable on a pc, and rightfully so, there isn't. Yeah there's premiere, its not the same, its trash in comparison, Again I've used both. premiere is clunky while final cut pro is elegant.

I actually like macs, I was a tech at a all mac school dist. I had a Ibook as my work computer, I love osx and I thought about buying a PB. But you just can't say that all cad software is the same. If it were as good no one would pay 4K for autocad, it would be silly, when can get a G5 and Domus.Cad for the same price, but thats not going to happen. Autocad is well autocad, and there is nothing comparable. Same for mastercam.

Plus apple people have been begging for it for a long time:
http://www.architosh.com/news/2002-0...axad-ox1.phtml

And on the mouse, yeah its external, not internal. So I have to lug around a nother mose for functionality, I'll just Ctrl+click.

I completely agree about the specific software you guys have mentioned. That's why I asked. Thing is, I can guarantee you that the majority of people walking into Bestbuy to get a new PC have never heard of Autocad or Ghost, or will ever have to worry about setting up permissions for a server, etc. And you're right, by the same token, there is software that's not available on Windows. ( Metasynth, Final Cut Pro, Logic, Shake, etc). But for mainstream software, there's nothing I can think of that Windows has a commanding lead in besides games.

But for probably 90% of comptuer users who just want something to do basic tasks, a $799 eMac or $1099 iBook are terrific choices. Coupled with the support from Apple from people who go through a lot of training and speak English well (who you can call up not just when you have problems, but when you just want advice on how to do something on your computer), Apple is a great choice.

I'm not sure what to say about the wrieless printer, suffice to say I have tried three different wireless print servers with two different inkjet printers recently, and it was that difficult on my two XP machines, and that easy on the Powerbook. You wouldn't have had problems with the network printer if it was rendezvous compatible. It would have literally just appeared in your print dialog when ready to print on all macs on the same network as it.

As for the "small extras", I consider them big things. Take, for example the power adapter. Here is a picture of a typical PC power supply you'd have to take the road compared to the same item for a mac laptop.

http://slow78.com/power.jpg

Not going to disagree with you there, but you make it sound like other companies do not do the same. PC Torque is a great example where people with general question email or phone them and get great responses in 5 minutes.

I love how the non-Apple adapter is messily strewn about with wires everywhere while the Apple adapter is neatly wound around itself . I wonder who the owner of the pic has a bias toward .

True, but it's nice to have for beginners to have someone on the phone to talk to and speak to clearly 24/7, and I was moreso comparing to Dell/Compaq/Sony etc with whom you're lucky to speak someone with a firm grasp of English.

The Apple adapter has a built in place to wind it, that's the only reason it's wound. Even if I did try to wind the PC adapter around, it has two cables versus one, a large protruding wall plug, and the brick itself is large. Actually, I don't know if you can tell but I actually did the PC one a favor because the cable that goes from the PC power brick to the laptop is neatly bound in a wire tie.

PS--I took the pic, just now. I use two PCs and a Mac. I love them all equally.